


ghosts that we knew

by phonebook



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-30
Updated: 2013-09-21
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phonebook/pseuds/phonebook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonghyun is a ghost and he lives in Jinki's room. Sometimes they team up to terrify people, sometimes they seek retribution, sometimes they play League. But there are rules to this ghost business.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This entire fic revolves around a character death, albeit one that occurred in the past, so plz keep that in mind if character death in fic makes you uncomfortable. I don't intend for this to be super oppressively angsty but it is a fact that weighs heavily on the story.

When Jinki yanks open the door to his bedroom, Jonghyun is sitting cross-legged on the plaid duvet, leaning back on his wrists. He's wearing that huge black sweater that nearly swallows him whole and a dumb smile that’s likewise too big for his dumb face, and he's not saying anything, just kind of grinning and waiting for Jinki to react. Jinki's backpack suddenly feels full of cinder blocks, or maybe it's that his limbs have all gone slack. He's sweating everywhere and he wonders how fast the human heart can beat before it just gives up.

Because he’s got so many feelings about Jonghyun being here in his house again that he could compose a symphony about the exact peroxide-blonde shade of Jonghyun’s hair, but he’s also pretty sure that people who die in car accidents aren't supposed to show up a week later on their best friends’ beds.

"Boo," Jonghyun says, his mouth going round with the word. Jinki had dismissed Mrs. Kim’s quietly-spoken suggestion that he see a psychiatrist after Jonghyun’s funeral, but he’s beginning to consider that a mistake.

Because here are the facts, the ones printed in the school paper:

Jonghyun had been, with a friend, riding his bike home from the 7-11 at around 10pm when he collided with the passenger side of a sedan headed west at the intersection. The sedan was white but the make, model and license plate remain unknown, as the vehicle fled the scene of the crime and the only witness was unable to remember any identifying characteristics aside from the color and a small bumper sticker that read, in English, "Beast of Cheddar." 

And then there are the other facts:

Jinki watched Jonghyun get hit by a car and can't remember anything useful aside from the nonsense phrase on a fucking bumper sticker.

And now Jonghyun is sitting on his bed with his not-shattered ankles tucked under his not-bloody knees like he belongs there and like he never left.

"You’re a hallucination or a delusion or something?" Jinki says, an unvoiced sigh lurking under each word. He drops his backpack on the floor and the whole room shakes, framed posters trembling on the walls.

"Boo, I’m a _ghost_ ,” Jonghyun says, sounding kind of exasperated. And that makes sense, he guesses. Jonghyun is too determined and annoying and alive to go out quietly.

"Are you, like, transparent now, Casper?" Jinki says. He stumbles closer to the bed, reaching weakly in front of him. "Will my hand go right through you?"

Jinki brushes one fingertip against Jonghyun's arm and it's like touching a dandelion: unusually ticklish on the pad of his finger, inhumanly soft--and he has this weird sense that if he's not careful, if he presses down too hard, Jonghyun will just disintegrate.

"Whoa," Jonghyun says, following a sound that's more of a nasally whinny than a laugh. He grins and cranes away from Jinki's hands. "Buy me dinner first?"

Jinki really can't be held responsible for the way his legs fold under him, or for the thunder of his knees thumping the floorboards. Jonghyun is in his room-- _in his room_ \--and he looks the same and he even sort of smells the same--baby powder, which he always used to put on his face--and he's a ghost or something or maybe Jinki is crazy after all. Jonghyun coming back is an idea he had quarantined: dangerous to everybody's health, best to never entertain. He had even bullied his subconscious out of any stupid dreams. 

So Jinki definitely cannot be held responsible for how wet his face his getting.


	2. Chapter 2

"Oh god, not again. Please stop, you’re gonna dehydrate yourself," Jonghyun says and looks away like he’s embarrassed for Jinki, although Jinki thinks Jonghyun is probably feeling pretty pleased with himself right now. They're playing FIFA and Jonghyun sucks just as much as a spectral entity as he did in life.

Jinki laughs wetly and wipes his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket. He stares at the dark splotch on the navy cotton and thinks: whoa. When was the last time he cried? He's going to need to disinfect his PS3 controller because he's dripping snot onto the control pad but he's crying and that's sort of incredible.

He's learned, over the course of his life, that people are afraid of you when something of yours breaks and you don't cry. As a boy, holding half of his favorite transformer in each hand, he just nodded, like, how interesting, so that was what happened when you left your toys on the driveway, and his parents had looked at him a little strangely, started asking him a lot of questions about his feelings. When his skateboard hit a crease in the sidewalk and he fell, he heard the dry snap in his ankle and lay there, in awe of how aware he suddenly was of every nerve in his body. He didn't cry when they lifted him onto the stretcher, and he didn't cry when they lifted Jonghyun onto one either. He remembers being convinced, somehow, that it was the same stretcher.

Jinki learned to fake it.

Jonghyun was the one who cried, for real. He cried every time he stubbed his toe on the one buckled floorboard in Jinki's living room. He cried when he failed his math tests, muffled, in the janitor's closet with the braided strings of a mop draping down onto his face, pissed-off and red-eared whenever Jinki found him there. He cried, in a really ugly, blissful way (nostrils flaring wide, mouth gaping open like a shark on a movie poster), when a local newspaper did a feature on his band, calling his lyrics "transcendent."

Jonghyun would cry and Jinki would sling an arm around his shoulder or shove at him with the flat of his palms and it just made sense, the mechanics of it.

But now: Jinki, cross-legged on his bedroom floor, playing video games with an actual ghost and crying because he's happy.

"Seriously, stop," Jonghyun says, squirming where he sits with his heels pressed into the seat of his jeans. "Stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"All in awe, like I just single-handedly cured cancer, or something. This isn't that big of a deal."

"Oh, yeah. Your resurrection as my undead roommate is pretty status quo."

Jonghyun groans at the TV. “I could be haunting the bathroom of a hot chick with a huge rack and instead I’m playing soccer games in your bedroom.” He chucks his controller into a pile of laundry. “Which, by the way, stinks from beyond the grave.”

Jonghyun unfolds his legs and gets up from the floor, leaving two foggy marks where his feet had been pressed to the wood.

"So, how does this work? Are there ghost rules?”

"There are rules. It’s all very serious," Jonghyun says. He leans to inspect Jinki’s bookshelf, and Jinki thinks that there’s a slight difference to Jonghyun now. It’s not his voice (kermit-y) or his height (5’ 5”) or the way he fidgets. It’s not something Jinki has words for. The setting sun casts a parallelogram of light onto the wall and maybe that’s part of it: the sunlight hits Jonghyun weird. If Jinki really squints, he can almost see something like television static crawling along the surface of Jonghyun’s skin.

"Like," Jonghyun begins, running his index finger along the book spines, "I have to scare people.”

Jinki snorts. “Well, good job. I’m still kinda pissing myself.” 

“Gross,” Jonghyun says, not disapprovingly. “But listen, this is like a job. If I go too long without getting spooky, I’m gone.”

“Forever? As in, laid to rest?” Jinki feels his palms getting damp again. Jonghyun just shrugs, the collar of his sweater slipping to reveal one shoulder blade. It’s smooth and tan like the rest of Jonghyun and not bruised the way Jinki remembers it.

Jinki swallows. "What are we waiting for, then? Let's scare somebody."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoliers for the movie The Faculty, maybe???

And yet, despite Jonghyun's ominous proclamation, it takes a while for them to get with the program.  
   
They spend the rest of the first day watching The Faculty on Jinki's bed, because Jonghyun found the DVD on Jinki's bookshelf and insisted they watch it since it's almost Halloween and--"Usher, Jinki! Baby Usher." They sit in the dark with their backs pressed against the headboard and their feet kicked out in front of them.  
   
"How come crazy supernatural shit always goes down at high schools?" Jonghyun asks.  
   
"I think it's an metaphor," Jinki says. He chews on his fingernail, mumbling around the finger in his mouth: "For how the high school experience is alienating."  
   
"Right. A metaphor." Jonghyun looks like he's seriously considering that for a few minutes, but then frowns as if he's dismissed the idea. Jinki doubts Jonghyun has ever felt alienated in his life. He seems to fit in anywhere, some sort of amorphous friendship machine.  
   
Elijah Wood is being shoved into a flagpole when Jonghyun turns his head suddenly, eyes zeroed in on the side of Jinki's face. It's the same sort of hilariously serious Missiles: Engaged look he gets when somebody mentions french fries.  
   
"Did they bury me with my guitar?"  
   
Not what Jinki is expecting him to say, not even remotely. There's an abrupt and throbbing pain in his chest, a twisting pull, like he's being wrung dry.  
   
The answer is: No, your mom said no. But Jinki can't get his throat to work. He just stares at Jonghyun, who's half-illuminated in the blue aura of the television.  
   
There's a beat of fruitless staring, then Jonghyun's mouth opens again.  
   
"What was the coffin made of? Was it…was it mahogany, or some shit?"  
   
Jinki pulls his eyes away from Jonghyun, focuses on a more innocuous spot somewhere above the television.  
   
"It was teak. Your dad went with teak."  
   
Jinki can't help it; he feels that overwhelming relief, that freaking rapturous explosion of joy in his chest going sour. There's a sick roll of guilt in his stomach, because his friend is back and that's more than he's even dared pray for, but he's mad. Is he allowed to be mad? Now Jonghyun is drilling Jinki about who attended his funeral, as flippant as a tourist double-checking an itinerary. And maybe Jonghyun can afford to be blasé about it, maybe these are all things Jonghyun feels like he needs to know. But this was real for Jinki just five hours ago. Still kind of is, a phantom wound aching somewhere in his chest. Jonghyun was _gone_.  
   
 _I picked out the flowers, you asshole,_ he wants to say. _I threw dirt on the hole._  
   
Jinki knows that he'll forgive Jonghyun for this conversation, can already feel the pain ebbing away, but he doesn't look at Jonghyun again for a while. It's hard to live with someone, he thinks, when you're still mourning them.  
   
   
Jinki drifts off during the scene where the southern belle explodes into an octopus monster, probably, because that's the last thing he can remember when he wakes up. His left cheek is crammed against his neck and there's a knot on the back of his head where it's propped on the headboard. He's wearing yesterday's clothes and when he wipes the drool off his mouth with his sleeve, he gets a whiff of stale cotton. The DVD menu music is playing on loop.  
   
Jonghyun is standing near the window, head angled upward, just looking through the pane. Jinki almost laughs, because, yeah, Jonghyun has always been a little delicate, but Jinki has never witnessed him gazing longingly out a window like a lovelorn heiress.  
   
But Jinki doesn't say anything, clamps his mouth shut. Jonghyun looks concentrated and also pained, like he's trying to solve a particularly challenging eye-puzzle, the kind you hold so close to your face that you go cross-eyed until, eventually, the image of a 3-D cat leaps up from the paper.  
   
And yet there's something that looks like real pain in the stretched line of Jonghyun's mouth. Jinki suddenly feels like an intruder in his own bedroom. A thin, strained moment is threading out between them, and Jinki doesn't know the consequences of breaking it.  
   
He shifts in the bed, his elbow knocks the headboard and that's enough to snap the silence. Jonghyun's gaze jerks away from the window and onto the spot where Jinki is guiltily squirming.  
   
"Morning, sunshine," Jonghyun says. He sounds cheerful but there's a hollowness underneath the lilt. Or maybe Jinki is just projecting.  
   
"Hey. What time is it?" Jinki massages the back of his neck, wincing.  
   
"It's 6am. You're gonna be late."  
   
   
Jinki should've realized that Jonghyun wouldn't be coming to school with him, that he'd be staying behind in the bedroom, but for some reason it doesn't cross his mind until Jinki has already stepped over the threshold of his house and onto the front steps.  
   
He turns around and backs up toward the sidewalk until he can see his bedroom window. There's Jonghyun, standing almost pressed up to the glass, drapes billowing around him like a freaking cliché. It's almost as if Jonghyun can read his mind (is that something that ghosts can do? God, Jinki hopes not) because he salutes Jinki with his middle finger.  
   
   
The Academy is bordered by wrought iron gates with little spears at the tip of each pole, the kind of gates you'd expect in gothic novels populated by really pale and tragic skeleton women. The actual school building itself is way less remarkable, a bland and obligatory tan monolith, three storeys of stucco and unadorned windows. But that gate is the sort of thing that inspires rumors. Rumors about demons and old cemeteries and curses and little girls with long hair. The official story is that the founder, Principal Choi, spent a semester abroad in England and found himself "inspired by the architecture". Jinki thinks that Principal Choi probably just reads those novels with the sad skeleton ladies.  
   
Despite the way kids talk, Jinki's never run into a single vengeful spirit during his going-on-four years here. He's willing to bet his A in Chemistry that the school is less haunted than Jinki's own house is. Though from the way his classmates have been avoiding him for the last week, he might as well be the apparition everybody's always whispering about.  
   
His butt has barely even made contact with his seat before the head in front of him whips around and Jinki is face-to-face with Kim Kibum. Kibum is only a sophomore, but so skilled in language that he joins the senior class for English. This is a fact that has been related to Jinki multiple times, mostly (entirely) by Kibum himself. Right now, Kibum is chewing on his unnaturally pink bottom lip and looking at Jinki like he wants to beg for something.  
   
There's an extremely awkward pause during which neither of them say a word and Kibum just keeps grinding that top row of neat teeth against the flesh of his lip. Kibum's eyes are big and glassy and Jinki notices that his teeth are actually really straight and white, wonders if his parents sprung for braces, and why isn't somebody saying something?  
   
"Hey," Jinki manages. He pulls his textbook out of his bag now that the bout of awkward paralysis has passed.  
   
"Hey," Kibum says. He licks his lips. "You look…good, today."  
   
"Uh. Thanks.  
   
"I don't--it's just that, you've looked kinda…you look better." Kibum's face now matches the color of his lips, a shade of cosmetic rose, and his nose is wrinkled in disgust. At what exactly, Jinki is unsure.  
   
And, despite that fiery trainwreck of a sentence, Jinki understands. Everybody had told Jinki not to go to school last week, to just stay home, that it wasn't worth it. But exams are this month. Jonghyun would've wanted him to go to school. He realizes that he can verify that with Jonghyun now, and makes a note in the margin of his notebook to pose the question when he gets home: You wouldn't have wanted me to blow my scholarship, right?  
   
It had probably been futile. Jinki barely remembers the last seven days, much less how to conjugate his "to be" verbs.  
   
"Thanks," Jinki says again, tries to make it sound honest and is impressed with himself when he mostly pulls it off. Kibum nods sharply and turns back around, but Jinki thinks he notices the kid's shoulders relax.  
   
And Jinki thinks that it's weird for Kibum to care about how he's doing, but then remembers why it isn't. Jonghyun and Kibum had been close friends. Jinki had only seen Kibum outside of school once, and it had been at one of Jonghyun's shows, which was, incidentally, the only show Jinki had actually attended.  
   
He remembers reading the name of Jonghyun's band—Empty Menu--on the marquee and walking down the gum-encrusted steps to a living-room sized venue and an ozone layer of smoke. He remembers feeling really embarrassed, with his nerdy too-short haircut and his impractical brown loafers and his khaki slacks, good lord. He remembers watching Jonghyun climb onto the stage, his mouth twisted into a stupidly appealing smirk even though he definitely stumbled and almost ate it in front of the whole 30-person audience, remembers how the purple lights played on Jonghyun's pale hair and he also remembers the tight v-neck Jonghyun wore and the way the bottom of the sleeves bit into the skin on his biceps and  
   
Nope.  
   
Jinki is nothing if not the master of compartmentalization. When Mrs. Ho walks through the door, Jinki's transition is flawless. He sits up straight, his face schooled into something neutral, absolutely not the face of a person who thinks weird things about his best friend's arms, and flips open the cover of his textbook.  
   
   
Choi Minho is tall and handsome and makes these very grave faces whenever you ask him for a favor, like he's receiving an edict, like he'd die for you, like he'd ride into the fires of hell if it would make you happy. It's uncomfortable and Jinki tries to avoid asking him for anything ever.  
   
But the kid has gotten a hundred times worse since Jonghyun's accident. He looks down at Jinki with his sad, soft cow-eyes and nods solemnly along to everything Jinki says, but it doesn't seem like he's listening. The sun is starting to set and there's a soft orange cast bleeding onto the walls of the 2nd-year classroom, this heavy mood settling in with it. Jinki is trying to organize a sports festival, here.  
   
"So, I'll need those forms by the end of next week?" Jinki stares expectantly. Minho actually looks like he's going to cry, eyebrows twisted upward. They're alone in the classroom and Minho is shuffling a bit on his feet, like a sprinter preparing to bolt.  
   
Minho finally sighs, jerks forward so suddenly that Jinki doesn't have any time to evade, and yanks Jinki into a hug. Jinki stumbles backward until the backs of his knees collide with the edge of a desk, and Minho just clings to him for dear life, both of his palms adhered to Jinki's back like the hand-shaped sticky toys Jonghyun used to buy from capsule machines at the mall.  
   
Minho shirt smells sweaty but it's an okay smell. A strangled noise escapes Jinki's throat, and Minho just squeezes him, whispers, "I miss him too," and then there's a burst of cold air on Jinki's skin as Minho darts away. Jinki hears the rubber soles of his sneakers squealing as he makes his way down the hall.  
   
Jinki staggers, bumps the desk again, and, unable to guide himself into a chair, sits on the floor.  
   
   
Jinki thinks about that hug for his entire walk home. Does he look like someone who needs a hug? Does he look like someone who needs to be told he "looks good"?  
   
He doesn't like the thought of that.  
   
He knows that the dark rings around his eyes have gotten a little more violet-tinted and he maybe hasn't been eating as much. But Jinki doesn't want to be the sad little ghost boy, wandering from classroom to classroom, subject to pitying and fearful whispers.  
   
Choi Minho, in particular, can shove it. Talking about Jonghyun as if the pain were something they share, as if Jonghyun had been something they'd shared. What did Minho know about anything?  
   
But there is absolutely no reason to pity him. Particularly now that Jonghyun is back and suddenly that's a song in Jinki's head, a chorus swelling in time to the clap of his shoes on the sidewalk: Jonghyun is back, he's back, he's here, he's back…  
   
And he's still high on the triumph of that score when he opens the door to his bedroom and finds Jonghyun rummaging through his dresser. Jonghyun whirls around, one of Jinki's white socks in his hand, and at least he has the good sense to look embarrassed. But Jinki doesn't even care, can feel himself grinning so wide that a cut is opening up on his dry lips.  
   
He rushes forward, wraps his arms over Jonghyun's arms and wedges his chin over Jonghyun's shoulder and hugs him. Jinki shivers, because there's that weird feeling again, all along the front of his body, like he's clutching something on the verge of disintegrating.  
   
Jonghyun doesn't move, just takes it, and he's smiling in a shaky way when Jinki pulls back.  
   
"Hi?" Jonghyun says. "Rough day at school?"  
   
"You're reorganizing my drawers?"  
   
"Just…just the socks." Jonghyun shrugs. "I was bored."  
   
"I missed you. A lot," Jinki says. His voice sounds breathy to his own ears and it feels like the words have been sucked out of him by some sort of emotion vacuum, without his permission. He feels lighter, though. It felt good to say. "I missed you so much it was killing me and now I'd really like to just play League with you and eat a whole bag of Cheetohs."  
   
"Um, hell yeah," Jonghyun says, and claps his hands together.  



End file.
